Scott Pilgrim creator and showrunner of the new Netflix anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off has responded to fan confusion about the show. The eight-part series begins with a pretty huge twist in its opening episode, before veering into a new direction from both the comics and the Edgar Wright-directed movie.
The decision to flip the story on its head landed the anime adaptation some stellar reviews from critics, but it has left some die-hard fans a bit confused. Indeed, some of the viewer reviews on Rotten Tomatoes have been pretty divisive with people either sharing their disappointment with the twist or waxing lyrical about how much they love it.
Posting on Instagram, Bryan Lee O'Malley, who made the series with BenDavid Grabinski, addressed some fan queries directly in a lengthy post, which he titled "a few notes". You can read the full post on Reddit here.
"I personally wrote every script with @bdgrabinski. I constantly rewrote dialogue to make it 'feel more Scott Pilgrim', but I couldn’t have written it without BenDavid. Also, nobody told us what to do – this was 100% our idea," he began, before going on to explain the process of creating it as well as how they recorded the English dialogue first before other languages were dubbed later.
The creator also seemed to want to make it clear that the show exists on its own, addressing the big twist that happens early on. "I think the anime timeline is its own thing," he added. "It comments on the book and the movie, but it isn’t meant to replace them. It’s just a new iteration that starts at the beginning again. I hope you can watch all 8 episodes before you decide how you feel. I know it’s pretty different and that might come as a shock, but it’s all intended in the spirit of fun."
O'Malley went on to urge viewers who were still confused to read the comics and check out the movie. "If you don’t like it, I still appreciate you," he concluded.
For more on Scott Pilgrim, check out our break down of the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off cameos, the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off episode 8 post-credits scene, and all of those Sonic references in the Netflix show.
